Spots and stripes appear on agile civets with body odor. Malagasy civets indeed have spotted and striped bodies and striped tails. But they lack climbing skills and musky smells.

Civets are supposed to be cat-like carnivores.• They can be found among Africa’s and Asia’s native animals.• They claim as their homelands continents and islands.• Madagascar counts among the civet’s insular distributions and ranges.

Superficial similarity indeed is the reason for grouping them initially with Asia-based, palm flower sap-drinking, striped civets.• But underlying differences prompt their re-grouping with 9 carnivorous, extant, Madagascar-only species, all of whom descend from the same ancestor.

Descent (Phylogeny) of Madagascar's ten carnivorans

Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle scientists Drs. Philippe Gaubert and Géraldine Veron assume for the Malagasy civet’s original ancestor an arrival date of 19,400,000 from a range of 16,500,000 – 22,700,000 years ago. Other specialists attribute to that carnivore’s new homeland:

Geological separation from the Indian subcontinent 88,000,000 years ago;

Human settlement from Borneo 1,450+ - 1,650+ years ago and from Central and South Africa 1,000+ years ago.

The ten carnivorous species endemic (“native only”) to Madagascar therefore have longstanding interactions with the island’s peoples. But their familiarity to the world’s inhabitants outside the lush South Indian Ocean island country is of shorter duration. For example, the Malagasy civet’s formal presentation to European scientists just traces back to 1776.

Supersensory whiskers grace each side of the dark, pointed muzzle. They grow far finer and longer than the dense, short hairs on Malagasy civet coats. They help Malagasy civets to survive just as much as:

12 incisors, 4 canines, 16 premolars, and 8 molars;

20 curved, powerful, sharp claws.

Fossa fossana, with alert ears and white-yellow eyeshine

Mammalogists allow for paired and solitary behaviors within Malagasy civet life cycles and natural histories. Females and males configure overlapping and shared territories. They contact each other by such vocalizations as:

Coq-coq when gathered together in groups or pairs;

Cries;

Groans.

They nocturnally forage as couples or singles for:

Bird eggs;

Frogs;

Fruits;

Insects;

Reptiles;

Tenrecs.

They get ready for the food-scarce, wintery months of June and July by directing ingested food to the tail’s internal storage areas. They keep their forays and hunts focused upon :

Bases of boulders, rocks, shrubs, and trees;

Ground-level animals and plants.

They leave individual dens around rocks, in hollow trees, and under fallen logs to mate between August and September.

Importers of small Indian civets (Viverra indica) for international perfume-makers.

Malagasy civets currently must compete with introduced civets and elude predatory mammals, raptors, and reptiles in fragmented, reduced habitats. But eco-tourism and environmentalism sustain them as much as governmental protection and scientific research. Malagasy civets indeed thank wildlife-lovers through engaging photo ops at bait stations in protected areas and surviving forests.

Adult Viverra schlegeli: competitor to Malagasy Civet and considered as subspecies of Small Indian Civet (Viverricula indica) ~

Viverra schlegeli occupy ; occupant of Madagascar and of Mayotte, an archipelago in northern Mozambique Channel between between northwest Madagascar and northeast Mozambique.

Sources Consulted

Bell, D.; Roberton, S.; and Hunter, P. R. 2004. "Animal Origins of SARS Coronavirus: Possible Links with the International Trade in Small Carnivores." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences 359:1107-1114.

Veron, Geraldine. 2010. “Phylogeny of the Viverridae and ‘Viverrid-like’ Feliforms.” Pp. 64-90 in Carnivoran Evolution: New Views on Phylogeny, Form and Function edited by Anjali Goswami and Anthony Friscia. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge Studies in Morphology and Molecules.

Jungle travelers may never know that they are being quietly watched by "invisible" jungle dwellers, such as Malagasy Striped Civets.

Jungle Eyes: green t-shirt ~ Available via AllPosters

Mammals of Madagascar: A Complete Guide by Nick Garbutt

The mammals that inhabit Madagascar are among the most extraordinary in the world. This portable guide offers a full survey and classification of all the Malagasy mammals, both endemic and introduced, including many new species only recently identified.